...Is slavery consistent with natural law?

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[From iJie Southern Literary Messenger, December, 1858. |

IS WWi CONSISTENT WITH NATOML LAW?

An Address delivered before the Virginia State Agricultural Society, at thh
Sixth Annual Exhibition, at Petersburg, 4th November, 1858.

BY JAMES P. HOLCOMBE.

Mr. President, and

Gentlemen of the Agrktdtural Society:
It seems to me eminently proper, to
connect with these imposing exhibitions
of the trophies of your agricultural skill,
a discussion of the whole bearings and
relations, jural, moral, social, and eco-
nomical, of that peculiar industrial sys-
tem to which we are so largely indebted
for the results that have awakened our
pride and gratification. No class in the
community has so many and such large
interests gathered up in the safety and
permanence of that system, as the Far-
mers of the State. The main-wheel and
spring of your material prosperity, inter-
woven with the entire texture of your
social life, underlying the very founda-
tions of the public strength and renown,
to lay upon it any rash liand would put
in peril whatever you value ; the security
of your property, the peace of your so-
ciety, the well-being — if not the exist-
ence of that dependent race which Pro-
vidence has committed to your guardian-
ship— the stability of your government,
the preservation in your midst of union,
liberty, and civilization. By the intro-
duction of elements of such inexpressi-
ble magnitude, the politics of our coun-
try have been invested with the grandeur
and significance which belong to those
great struggles upon which depend the

destinies of nations. The mad outbreaks
of popular passion, the rapid spread of
anarchical opinions, the mournful decay
of ancient patriotism, the wide disruption
of Christian unity, which have marked
the progress, and disclosed the power,
purpose and spirit of this agitation, come
home to your business and bosoms with
impressive emphasis of warning and in-
struction. No pause in a strife around
which cluster all the hopes and fears of
freemen, can give any earnest of endur-
ing peace, until the principles of law and
order which cover with sustaining sanc-
tion all the relations of our society, have
obtained their rightful ascendency over
the reason and conscience of the Christian
world.

The most instructive chapters in history
are those of opinions. The decisive bat-
tle-fields of the world, furnish but vulgar
and deceptive indices of human progresa.
Its true eras are marked by transitions of
sentiment and opinion. Those invisible
moral forces that emanate from the minds
of the great thinkers of the race, rule the
courses of history. The recent awaken-
ing of our Southern mind upon the ques-
tion of African Slavery, has been fol-
lowed by a victory of peace, which we
trust, will embrace within its beneficent
influence generations and empires yet un-
born. Such was the strength of anti-

Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Late ?

slavery feeling within our own borders,
that scarcely a quarter of a century has
elapsed since an Act of Emancipation
■was almost consummated, under the aus-
pices of our most intelligent and patriotic
citizens; a measure which probably all
would now admit bore in its womb ele-
ments of private distress and public
calamity, that must have impressed upon
our history, through ages of expanding
desolation, the lines of fire and blood.
But

"Whirlwinds fitliest scatter pestilence."

Nothing less than an extremity of peril
could have induced a general revision of
long-standing opinions, intrenched in
formidable prejudices, and sanctioned by
the most venerable authority. Slavery
•was explored, for the first time, with
the forward and reverted eye of true
statesmanship, under all the lights of
history — of social and political philoso-
phy— of natural and Divine law. Public
sentiment rapidly changed its face. Every
year of controversy has encouraged the
advocates of " discountenanced truth" by
the fresh accessions it has brought to
their numbers, whilst no desertions have
thinned the enlarging ranks. The cele-
brated declaration of Mr. Jefferson, that
he knew no attribute of the Almighty
which would take the side of the master
in a contest with his slave, is so far from
commanding the assent of the intelligent
slaveholders of this generation, that the
justice, the humanity, and the policy of
the relation as it exists with us, has be-
come the prevailing conviction of our peo-
ple. Public honours, and gratitude, are the
fitting meed of the statesmen, whether liv-
ing or dead, (and amongst them I recall no
names more eminent than those associated
with the proudest traditions of this hospi-
table and patriotic city, Leigh, Gholson,
and Brown,) who threw themselves into
this imminent and deadly breacli, and
grappling with an uninformed and unre-
flecting sentiment, delivered the common-
wealth, when in the very jaws of death,
from moral, social and political ruin.
Permit me to premise some words of
explanation as to the meaning and extent

of the subject upon which I have been
invited to address this meeting. It pre-
sents no question of municipal or inter-
national law. It raises no inquiry as to
the rightfulness of the means by which
slavery Avas introduced into this conti-
nent, nor into the nature of the legal sanc-
tion.s under which it now exists. There
can be no doubt that slavery, for more
than a century after it was established in
the English colonies, was in entire har-
mony with the Common Law, as it was
expounded by the highest judicial au-
thorities, and with the principles of the
Law of Nations, and of Natural Law as
laid down in the writings of the most
eminent publicists. At the commence-
ment of our Revolution men were living
who remembered the Treaty of Utrecht, by
which, in the language of Lord Brougham,
all the glories of Bamillies and Blenheim
were bartered for a larger share in the lu-
crative commerce of the slave trade. But
whatever may be our present opinions upon
these subjects, the black race now consti-
tutes an integral part of our community, as
much so as the white, and the authority of
the State to adjust their mutual relations
can in no manner depend upon the method
by which either was brought within its
jurisdiction. The State in every age must
provide a constitution and laws, if it does
not find them in existence, adapted to its
special wants and circumstances. Afri-
can Slavery in the United States is con-
sistent with Natural Law, because if all
the bonds of public authority were sud-
denly dissolved, and the community called
upon to reconstruct its social and political
system, the relations of the two races re-
maining in other respects unaltered, it
would be our right and duty to reduce
the negro to subjection. To the phrase
Natural Law, I shall attach in this dis-
cussion the signification in which it is
generally used, and consider it as synony-
mous with justice; not that imperfect
justice which may be discerned by the
savage mind, but those ethical rules, or
principles of right, which, upon the
grounds of their own fitness and pro-
priety, and irrespective of the sanction
of Divine authority, commend themselves
to the most cultivated human reason.

Is Slavery Consistent tcWi Natural Lata?

Slavery we may define, so as to embrace
all the elements that properly belong to
it, as a condition or relation in -which one
man is charged -with the protection and
support of another, and invested with an
absolute property in his labour, and such
a degree of authority over his person as
may be requisite to enforce its enjoyment.
It is a form of involuntary restraint, ex-
tending to the personal as well as politi-
cal liberty of the subject. The slave has
sometimes, as at one period under the
Roman jurisprudence, been reduced to a
mere chattel, the power of the master
over the person of the slave being as
absolute as his property in his labour.
•^ This harsh and unnatural feature has
never deformed the relation in any Chris-
-tain country. In the United States the
double character of the slave, as a moral
person and as a subject of property, has
been universally acknowledged, and to a
greater or less degree protected, both by
public sentiment and by the law of the
land. It furnishes a key to the under-
standing of one of the most celebrated
clauses in our Federal Constitution, as all
know who are familiar with the luminous
exposition, given by Mr. Madison in the
Federalist, of its origin and meaning. In
our own State, amongst other proofs of
its recognition, we may point to the pri-
vilege conferred upon the master of eman-
cipating his slave, and to the obligation
imposed upon him of providing for his
support when old, infirm, or insane ; to
the enactments which punish injuries to
the slave, whether from a master or stran-
ger, as offences of the same nature as if
inflicted upon a white person, and to the
construction placed by our courts upon
the general language of criminal statutes,
by which the slave, as a person, has been
embraced within the range of their pro-
tection ; to the regulations for the trial of
slaves charged with the commission of
crime, which, whilst they exact the re-
sponsibilities of moral agents, temper the
administration of justice with mercy, and
to the exemption from labour on the
Lord's Day, an exemption which is shown
by the provision for the Christian slave of
a Jewish master, to have been established
as a security for a right of conscience.

Indeed, he scarcely labours under any
personal disability, to which we may not
find a counterpart, in those which attach
to other incompetent classes — the minor,
the lunatic, and the married woman.
The statement of my subject presup-
poses the existence of the State. It thus
assumes that there are involuntary re-
straints which may be rightfully impos-
ed upon men, for the State itself is but
the sum and expression of innumerable
forms of restraint by which the life, lib-
erty, and faculties of individuals are
placed under the control of an authority
independent of their volition ? The
truth that the selfishness of human na-
ture, forces upon us the necessity of sub-
mitting to the discipline of law, or living
in the license of anarchy, is too obvious
to have required any argument in its
support, in this presence. Until man be-
comes a law unto himself, society through »X
a political organization must supply his
want of self-control. Whether it may
establish such a form of restraint, as
personal slavery, cannot be determined
until the principles upon which its au-
thority should be exercised, have been
settled, and the boundaries traced be-
tween private right and public power.
The authority of the State must be com-
mensurate with the objects for which it
was established. Its function is, to re-
concile the conflicting rights, and oppos-
ing interests, and jarring passions of in-
dividuals, so as to secure the general
peace and progress. It proceeds upon
the postulate, that societyis our state of
nature, and that men by the primary law
of their being, are bound to live and perfect
themselves in fellowship with each other.
As God does not ordain contradictory
and therefore impossible things, men
can derive no rights from him which are
inconsistent with the duration and per-
fection of society. The rights of the
individual are not such as would belong
to him, if he stood upon the earth like
Campbell's imaginary "Last Man,"
amidst unbroken solitude, but such only
as when balanced with the equal rights
of other men, may be accorded to each,
without injury to the rest. The neces-
sities of social existence, then, not in the

Is Slavery Consistent loitTi Natural Law?

rudeness of the savage state, but under
those complex and refined forms which
have been developed by Christian civili-
zation, constitute a horizon by which the
unbounded liberty of nature is spanned
and circumscribed.

This is no theory of social absolutism.
It does not make society the source of
our rights, which therefore might be con-
ferred or withheld at its caprice or dis-
cretion, but it does regard the just wants
of society, as the measure and practical
expression of their extent. It is no re-
production of the exploded error of the
ancient statesmen, who inverting the
natural relations of the parties, consid-
ered the aggrandizement of the State,
without reference to the units of which
it was composed, as the end of social
union. The State was made for man,
and not man for the State, but the coop-
eration of the State is yet so necessary
to the perfection of his nature, that his
interests require the renunciation of any
claim inconsistent with its existence, or
its value as an agency of civilization. It
invades no province sacred to the indi-
vidual, because the Divine Being who
has rendered government a necessity, has
made it a universal blessing, by ordain-
ing a preestablished harmony between
the welfare of the individual and tlie re-
straints which are requisite to the well-
being of society.

Unless there is some fatal flaw in this
reasoning, men have no rights wliich
cannot be reconciled with the possession
of a restraining power by the State,
large enough to embrace every variety
of injustice and oppression, for which
society may furnish the occasion or the
opportunity. The social union brings
with it dangers and temptations, as well
as blessings and pleasures— and men can-
not fulfil the law and purpose of their
being, unless the State has authority to
^ protect the community from the tumul-
tuous and outbreaking passions of its
members, and to protect individuals as
far as it can be accomplished without
prejudice to the community from the
consequences of their own incompetence,
improvidence and folly. Such are the
natural differences between men in char-

acter and capacity, that without a steady
and judicious effort by the State to re-
dress the balance of privilege and oppor-
tunity which these inequalities constantly
derange, the rich must grow richer, and
the poor poorer, until even anarchy would
be a relief to the masses, from the suffer-
ing and oppression of societ3^ Owing
likewise to this variety of condition, and
of moral and intellectual endowment, it
is impossible to prescribe any stereotype
forms admitting of universal application,
under which the restraining discipline of
law should be exercised. The ends of
social union remain the same through all
ages, but the means of realizing those
ends must be adapted to successive
stages of advancement, and change with
the varying, intelligence and virtue of in-
dividuals, and classes, and races, and
the local circumstances of different coun-
tries. The object being supreme in im-
portance must carry with it as an inci-
dent, the right to employ the means
which may be requisite to its attainment.
The individual must yield property, lib-
erty, life itself when necessary to pre-
serve the life, as it were, of the collec-
tive humanity. To these principles, every
enlightened government in the world,
conforms its practice, protecting men not
only from each other, but from themselves,
graduating its restraints according to the
character of the subject, and multiplying
them with the increase of society in
wealth, population and refinement. We
cannot look into English or American
jurisprudence without discovering innu-
merable forms of restraint upon rights
of persons as well as rights of pro-
perty, as in that absolute subordi-
nation of all personal rights to the gen-
eral welfare, which lies at the foundation
of the law for the public defence, the
law to punish crimes, and the law to sup-
press vagrancy: or in those qualified re-
straints by which the administration of
justice between individuals, has been
sometimes enforced, as in imprisonment
for debt : or in that partial and tempora-
ry subjection of one person to the con-
trol of another, either for the benefit of
the former, or upon grounds of pub-
lic policy, presented in the law of

Is Slavery Consistent icilh Natural Late?

parent and child, guardian and ward,
master and apprentice, lunatic and com-
mittee, husband and •wife, officer and sol-
diers (if the army, captain and mariners
of the ship. Whether we proceed in
search of a general principle, which may
ascertain the extent of the public authority
byacourse of inductive reasoning, or by an
observation of the practice of civilized
communities, we reach the same conclu-
sion. The State must possess the power
of imposing any restraint without regard
to its form, which can be shown by an
<i enlarged view of social expediency, or
upon an indulgent consideration for hu-
man infirmity, to be beneficial to its sub-
ject, or necessary to the general well-being.
In the legislation of Congress for the
Indian tribes within our territory, and in
that of Great Britain for the alien and
dependent nations under her jurisdiction,
we see how the public authority, as flexi-
ble as comprehensive in its grasp, accom-
modates itself to the weakness and infir-
mity of races, as well as of individuals.
Upon what principles is the British gov-
ernment administered in the East? In
1833, on the application of the East ludia
Company for a renewal of its charter,
they were explained and defended by
Macaulay in a speech which would have
delighted Burke, as much by its practi-
cal wisdom, as its glittering i-hetorio. An
immense society was placed under the
almost despotic rule of a few strangers.
No securities were provided for liberty or
property, which an Euglisman would
have valued. This system of servitude
I was vindicated, not on the grounds of ab-
stract propriety, but of its adaptation to
the wants and circumstances of those
upon whom it was imposed. India, it
was urged, constituted a vast exception
to all those general rules of political sci-
ence which might be deduced from the
experience of Europe. Her population
was disqualified by character and habit,
for the rights and privileges of British
1 freemen. In their moral and sociixl ame-
lioration, under British rule, was to be
found the best proof of its justice and
policy. It was a despotism no doubt, but
it was a mild and paternal one; ani no
form of restraint less stringent could be

substituted with equal advantage to those
upon whom it was to operate. It has of-
ten occurred to me in reading those fervid
declamations upon Southern slavery, with
which this great orator has inflamed
the sensibilities of the British public, that
his lessons of sober and practical states-
manship, from which no Englisli ministry
has ever departed, might be turned with
irresistible recoil upon their author. Was
American slavery introduced b}^ wrong
and violence? India was "stripped of
her plumed and jewelled turban," by ra-
pine and injustice. Are the relations of
England to India, so anomalous that it
would be unsafe to accept generalizations
drawn from the experience of other com-
munities? History might be interroga-
ted in vain, for a parallel to the condition
of our Southern society. Are the Hin-
doos unfit for liberty ? Not more so than
the African. Is despotism necessary in
India, because it is problematical whether
crime could be repressed, or social order
preserved undermore liberal institutions?
The danger of license and anarchy would
be far more imminent, from an emanci-
pation of our slaves. If the statesman
despairs of making brick without straw
in the East, can he expect to find the pro-
blem easier in the West ? Has the Hin-
doo improved in arts and morals under
the beneficent sway of his British mas-
ter ? In the transformation of the Afri-
can savage into the Christian slave, the
relative advance has been immeasurably
greater. The truth is, that the principles
which lie at the foundation of all politi-
cal restraint, may make it the duty of the V
State under certain circumstances, to es-
tablish the relation of personal servitude.
All forms of restraint involve the exer-
cise of power over the individual without
his consent. All are inconsistent with
any theory of natural right which claims
for man, a larger measure of liberty than
can be reconciled with the peace and pro-
gress of the society in which he lives.
All operate harshly at times upon indi-
viduals. All are reflections upon human
nature, and alike wrong in the abstract.
Any is right in the- concrete, when neces-
sary to the welfare of the community in
which it exists, or beneficial to the sub-

Is Slavery Consistent iciih Natural Laiv ?

ject upon whom it is imposed. If society
may establish the institution of private
property, involving restrictions by which
the majority of mankind are shut out
from all access to that great domain which
the author of nature has stocked with the
means of subsistence for his children,
and justify a restraint so Comprehensive
and onerous, by its tendency to promote
civilization ; if it may discriminate be-
tween classes and individuals, and appor-
tion to some a larger measure of political
liberty than it does to others; if it may
take away life, liberty or property when
demanded by the public good : if, as in
various personal relations, it may protect
the helpless and incompetent, by placing
them under a guardianship proportioned
in the term and extent of its authority to
the degree and duration of the infirmity;
why if a commensurate necessity arises,
S and the same great ends are to be accom-
plished, is its claim to impose upon an infe-
rior race the degree of personal restraint
which may be requisite to coerce and di-
rect its labour, to be treated as a usurpa-
tion ? The authority of the State under
proper circumstances to establish a sys-
tem of slavery, is one question ; the ex-
istence of those circumstances, or the ex-
pediency of such legislation is another
and entirely distinct question. No doubt
^ a much smaller capacity for self-control,
and a much lower degree of Intelligence
must concur, to justify personal slavery,
than would be sufficient to impart validi-
ty to other forms of subordination. No
doubt the public authority upon this as
upon every other subject, may be abused
by the selfish passions and interests of
men. Byt once acknowledge the right of
society to establish a government of pains
and penalties, for the protection of the
individual and the promotion of the gen-
eral welfare, then unless it can be shown
that slavery can in no instance be neces-
sary to the well being of the community,
or conducive to the happiness of the sub-
ject, (a proposition which is inconsistent
j with the admission of all respectable

British and American abolitionists that
any plan of emancipation in the Southern
States, should be gradual and not imme-
diate;) once make this fundamental con-

cession, and the rightfulness of slavery,
like that of every other form of restraint,
becomes a question of time, place, men
and circumstances.

The people of the United States ac-
cepting without much reflection, those
expositions of human rights embodied in
the infidel philosophy of France, and glow-
ing with that generous enthusiasm to
communicate the blessings of liberty
which is always inspired by its posses-
sion, have been disposed to look with com-
mon aversion upon all forms of unequal
restraint. Ravished by the divine airs
of their own freedom, they have imag-
ined that its strains, like those heard by
the spirit in Comus, might create a soul
under the ribs of death. Forgetting the
ages through whose long night their
fathers wrestled for this blessing, they
have regarded an equal liberty, as the
universal birth-rightof humanity. Hence,
as they have witnessed nation after nation
throwing off its old political bondage,
and in the first transports of emotion,
" shedding the grateful tears of new-born
freedom" over the broken chains of ser-
vitude, they have welcomed them into
the glorious fellowship of republican
States, with plaudit, and sympathy, and
benediction. But, alas! the crimes which
have been committed in the name of lib-
erty, the social disorder and political
convulsion which have attended its pro-
gress, if they have not broken the power
of its spells over the heart, have dispersed
the illusions of our understanding. What
has become of France, Italy, Greece,
Mexico, Spanish America ? that stately
fleet of freedom, whichwhen first launched
upon the seas of time, with all its brave-
ry on, was " courted by every wind that
held it play." A part has be:n swal-
lowed up in the gulfs of anarchy and
despotism — the rest still float above the
wave, but with rudder and anchor gone,
stripped of every bellying sail and steady-
ing spar, they only serve,

■' Like ocean wrecks, to illuminate the
storm."

The melancholy experience of both
hemispheres has compelled all but the
projectors of revolution to acknowledge,

In Slaveri/ Consistent with Natural Law f

that the forms of liberty are valueless
without its spirit, and that an attempt to
. outstrip the march of Providence, by
conferring it on a people unprepared for
its enjoyments by habit, tradition, or
character, is an indescribable fdly —
■which instead of establishing peace, order,
and justice, will be more likely to inau-
gurate a reign of terror and crime in
which civilization itself may perish.

If the justice or fitness of slavery is
to be determined, like other forms of in-

. voluntary restraint, not by speculative
abstractions, but by reference to its adap-
tation to the wants and circumstances of
the community in which it id established;
and especially of the people over whom
it is imposed, it only remains that we
should apply these principles to the ques-
tion of African Slavery in the United
States. I shall not defend it as the only
relation between the races, in which the

\ superior can preserve the civilization that
renders life dear and valuable. Tiiis
proposition can indeed be demonstrated
by plenary evidence, and it is sufficient
by itself to acquit the slaveholder of all
guilt in the eye of morals. But if the
system could be vindicated upon no
higher ground, every generous spirit

J would grieve over the mournful necessity
which rendered the degradation of the
black man indispensable to the advance-
ment of the white. Providence has con-
demned us to no such cruel and unhappy
f;\te. The relation in our society is de-

i manded by the highest and most endu-
ring interests of the slave, as well as the
master. It exists and must be preserved
for the benefit of both parties. Duty is
indeed the tenure of the master's right.
Upon him there rests a moral obligation
to make such provision for the comfort
of the slave, as after proper consideration
of the burthens and casualties of the
service, can be deemed a fair compensa-
tion for his labour ; to allow every inno-
cent gratification compatible with the
steady, though mild discipline, as neces-

li sary to the happiness as the value of the
slave ; to furnish the means and facilities
for religious instruction ; and to contri-
bute, as far and fast as a proper regard
to the public safety will permit, to his

r

general elevation and improvement. For
oppression or injustice, allow me to say,
I have no excuse to ofi'er. I am willing
to accept the sentiment of the heathen
philosopher, and to regard a man's treat-
ment of his slaves as a test of his virtue.
And whenever a slaveholder is found who
so fiir forgets the sentiments of humanity,
the feelings of the gentleman, and the
principles of the Christian, as to abuse
the authority which the law gives him
over his slaves, I trust that a righteous
and avenging public sentiment will pur-
sue him with the scorn and degradation
which attend the husband or father,
who by cruel usage makes home intolera-
ble to wife or child.

Personal and political liberty are both
requisite to develope the highest stjde of
man. They furnish the amplest oppor-
tunities for the exercise of that self-con- ^
trol which is the germ and essence of
every virtue, and for that expansive and
ameliorating culture by which our whole
nature is exalted in the scale of being,
and clothed with the grace, dignity and
authority, becoming the lords of creation.
Whenever the population of a State is
homogeneous, although slavery may per-
form some important functions in quick-
ening the otherwise tardy processes of
civilization, it ought to be regarded as a
temporary and provisional relation. If
there are no radical difi'erences of physi-
cal organization or moral character, the
barriers between classes are not insur-
mountable. The discipline of education
and liberal institutions, may raise the serf
to the level of the baron. Against any
artificial circumscription seeking to ar-
rest that tendency to freedom which is
the normal state of every society of
equals, human nature would constantly
rise in rebellion. But where two distinct
races are collected upon the same terri- \r
tory, incapable from any cause of fusion
or severance, the one being as much su"
perior to the other in strength and intel-
ligence as the man to the child, there the
rightful relation between them is that of
authority upon the one side, and subor-
dination in some form, upon the other.
Equality, personal and political, could
not be established without inflicting the

Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law ?

climax of injustice upon the superior,
and of cruelty on the inferior race: for
if it were possible to preserve such an
arrangement, it would wrest the scep-
tre of doniiuion from the wisdom and

'' strength of society, and surrender it to
its weakness and folly. " Of all rights
of man," says Carlyle, " the right of
the ignorant man to be guided by the
■wiser, to be gently and firmly held in the
true course, is the indispensablest. Na-
ture has ordained it from the first. So-
ciety struggles towards perfection by con-
forming to and accomplishing it, more
and more. If freedom have any mean-
ing, it means enjoyment of this right, in
■which all other rights are enjoyed. It is
a divine right and duty on both sides,
and the sum of all social duties between
the two." Under the circumstances I
have supposed, no intelligent man could
hesitate, except as to the form of subor-

-i dination : nor has entire equality been
ever allowed in society where the infe-
rior race constituted an element of any
magnitude.

Personal servitude is generally the
harshest and most objectionable form of
restraint, exposing its subjects to an
abuse of power involving greater sufier-
ing than any other. But this is not an
invariable law, even in a homogeneous
society. The most recent researches into
the condition of the labouring classes of
Europe, the descendants of the emanci-
pated serfs, have satisfied all candid in-
quirers after truth that a large number
have sunk below the level of their an-
cient slavery, and would be thankful to
belong to any master who would furnish
them with food, clothing and shelter.
But when we are settling the law of a
society embracing in its bosom distinct
and unequal races, the problem is com-
plicated by elements which create the
gravest doubt whether personal liberty
will prove a blessing or a curse. It may
become a question between the slavery,
and the extinction or further deteriora-
tion of the inferior race. Thus, if it is
difficult to procure the means of subsis-
tence from density of population or other
cause, and if the inferior race is incapa-
ble of sustaining a competition with the

superior in the industrial pursuits of life,
a condition of freedom which would in-
volve such competition, must either ter-
minate in its destruction, or consign it
to hopeless degradation. If, under the.«e
circumstances, a system of personal serv-
itude gave reasonable assurance of pre-
serving the inferior race, and gradually
imparting to it the amelioration of a
higher civilization, no Christian states-
man could mistake the path of duty.
Natural law, illuminated in its decision
by History, Philosophy, and Religion^
w(juld not only clothe the relation with
the sanction of justice, but lend to it the
lustre, of mercy. It will not, I appre-
hend, be difficult to show that all thes^o
conditions apply to African slavery iii
the United States. Look at the races
which have been brought face to face in
nnmanageable masses, upon this conti-
nent, and it is impossible to mistake their
relative position. The one still filling
that humble and subordinate place, which
as the pictured monuments of Egppt
attest, it has occupied since the dawn of
history ; a race which during the long-
revolving cycles of intervening time has
founded no empire, built no towered city,
invented no art, discovered no truth, be-
queathed no everlasting possession to the
future, through law-giver, hero, bard, or
benefactor of mankind : a race which,
though lifted immeasurably above its na-
tive barbarism by the refining influence
of Christian servitude has yet given no
signs of living and self-sustaining cul-
ture. The other, a great composite race
which has incorporated into its bosom all
the vital elements of human progress;
which, crowned with the traditions of his-
tory and bearing in its hands the most
precious trophies of civilization, still re-
joices in the overflowing energy, the
abounding strength, the unconquerablo
will which have made it " the heir of all
the ages ;" and which with aspirations un-
satisfied by centuries of toil and achieve-
ment, still vexes sea and land with its
busy industry, binds coy nature faster in
its chains, embellishes life more prodi-
gally with its arts, kindles a wider
inspiration from the fountain lights of
freedom, follows knowledge

Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law f

9

"like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human
thought,''

and pushing its unresting columns still
further into the regions of eldest Night,
in lands more remote than any over
which Roman eagles ever flevr, " to the
farthest verge of the green earth," plants
the conquering banner of the Cross,

"Encircling continents and oceans vast,
In one humanity."

It is impossible to believe that the su-
premacy in which the Caucasian has
towered over the African through all the
past can be shaken, or that the black
man can ever successfully dispute the
preeminence with his white brother as
members of the same community, in the
arts and business of life. Could such
races be mated with each other ? It is
unnecessary to refer to Egypt or Central
America, where a mongrel population,
monumenta veneris nefandce, exhibit
the deteriorating influence of a similar
fusion. If there were no broad and in-
delible dividing lines of colour and phys-
ical organization to keep the black and
white races apart, their respective tra-
ditions, extremes of moral and intellec-
tual advancement, and unequal aptitudes,
if not capacities for higher civilization,
separate them by an impassible gulf.
That feeble remnant of our kindred, who,
surrounded by hordes of barbarian?, yet
linger among the deserted seats of West
India civilization, may forget the dignity
of Anglo-Saxon manhood, in the despair
and poverty to which they have been re-
duced by British injustice ; but we,
" sprung of earth's first blood," and
"foremost in the files of time," who un-
der Providence are masters of our des-
tiny, will never permit the generations
of American history to be bound to-
gether by links of shame. Is the de-
portation of the African race practicable ?
^ A more extravagant project was never
seriously entertained by the human un-
derstanding. There are economical con-
siderations alone, which would render it
utterly hopeless. The removal of our

black population would create a gap in
the industry of the world, which no white
emigration could fill. It would bring
over the general prosperity of the coun-
try a blight and ruin, that would dry up v
all the sources of revenue on which the
success of the measure would depend.
Its consequences would not terminate
with this continent. The great wheel
which moves the commerce and manu-
factures of the world, would be arrested
in its revolutions. General bankruptcy
would follow a shock, besides which the
accumulated financial crises of centuries
would be unfelt. In the recklessness
and despair of crime and famine thus
induced, the ancient landmarks of em-
pire might be disturbed, and all existing
governments shaken to their foundation.
No favourable inference can be drawn
from the immense emigration, which,
like the swell of a mighty sea, is pouring
upon our shores. It comes from regions
where population is too dense for sub-
sistence, and where a vacant space is
closed as soon as it is opened. It is im-
pelled by double influences, neither of
which can operate to any extent upon
the American slave, want and wretch-
edness at home, and all material and
moral attractions abroad. It is compos-
ed of men accustomed at least to personal
freedom, and belonging to races en-
dowed with far more energy and intelli-
gence than the African. It is received
into a community, whose strength and
vitality enable it to absorb and assimilate
a much larger foreign element than any
of which history has any record. If the
black man was able and willing to re-
turn to his native land, he must carry
with him the habits and feelings of the
slave. Can it be supposed that such a
living cloud, as the annual increase of
our slaves, could discharge its contents
into the bosom of any African society,
without blighting in the license of their
first emancipation from all restraint,
whatever promise of civilization it might
have held out ?

If we must accept the permanent res-
idence of this race upon our soil, as a
providential arrangement beyond human
control, it only remains to adjust the

10

Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Laio?

form of its subordination. Should it em-
brace personal, as well as political servi-
tude ? Personal slavery surrounds the
black man with a protection and saluta-
ry control which his own reason and en-
ergies are incapable of supplying, and
by converting elements of destruction
into sources of progress, promotes his
physical comfort, his intellectual culture,
and his moral amelioration. Emancipa-
tion upon the other hand in any form,
gradual or immediate, would either de-
stroy the race through a wasting pro-
cess of poverty, vice, and crime, or sink
it into an irrecoverable deep of savage
degradation. What Homer has said may
be true, that a free man loses half his
value the day he becomes a slave ; but
it is quite as true, that the slave who is
converted into a freeman, is more likely
to lose the remaining half than to re-
cover what is gone. There are no ra-
tional grounds upon which we could an-
ticipate for our slaves, an advancing civ-
ilization if they were emancipated, or
upon which we could expect them to
preserve their contented temper, their
material comfort, their industrious hab-
its, and their general morality. The ne-
gro has learned much in contact with
the white man, but he is yet igno-
rant of that great art which is the
guardian of all acquisition, the art
of self-government. The superiority of
the white man in skill, energy, foresight,
providence, aptitude for improvement,
and control over the lower appetites and
passions, would give him a decisive and
fatal advantage in the pitiless competi-
tion of life. The light which history
sheds around this problem, is broad and
unchanging. Wherever unequal races
are brought together, unless reduced by
despotism to an indiscriminate servitude,
or mingled by a deteriorating and de-
moralizingfusion, theinferior must choose
between slavery and extinction. Upon
these principles only can we explain the
preservation of the Indian inhabitants
of Spanish America, and the destruction
of the aboriginal races which have cross-
ed the path of English colonization.
All the lower stages of civilization
are characterized by an improvidence of

the future and a predominance of the
animal nature, which increase the force
of temptation, and at the same time di-
minish the power of resistance. Hence
it is, that when an inferior race, anima-
ted by the ^passions of the savage, but
destitute of the restraining self-control
which is developed by civilization, is
brought in contact with a higher form of
social existence, where the stimulants
and facilities for sensual gratification are
multiplied, and the consequences of ex-
cess and improvidence are aggravated in
fatality, it is mown down by a mortality
more terrific than the widest waste of war.
Private charity and the influence of
Christianity upon individuals may retard
the operation of these causes, but destruc-
tion is only a question of time. With-
out a judicious husbandry of the surplus
proceeds of labour in the day of pros-
perity to meet the demands of age, sick-
ness and casualty, poverty alone with
the disease, sufi"ering and crime that at-
tend it, would wear out any labouring
population. The remnant of the Indian
tribes scattered along the lower banks of
the St. Lawrence, present an impressive
illustration of these simple political
truths. They manifest, says Professor
Bowen, sufficient industry when the re-
ward of labour is immediate : but sur-
rounded by an abundance of fertile and
cleared land, where others would grow
rich, they are rapidly perishing from im-
providence alone.

Even in England, in periods of man-
ufacturing prosperity, when wages are
high, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
reckons with as much confidence upon
the expenditure by the operatives of
their surplus profits, in spirits, tobacco,
and other hurtful stimulants, as upon the
proceeds of the income tax. And if the
working class of England, instead of be-
ing constantly recruited from a higher or-
der of society, consisted of an inferior race,
the annual losses from intemperance and
improvidence would soon carry it ofi". As
population becomes denser, our free blacks
are destined to exemplify the same great
law. In the free States, where an en-
croaching tide of white emigration is driv-
ing them from one field of industry after an-

Is Slavery Consistent icith Natural Law f

11

other, they already stand, as the statistics
of population, disease and crime disclose,
upon the narrowest isthmus which can
divide life from death. AVhen we re-
member that the destructive agencies
which would be let loose amongst our
slaves, by emancipation, are as fatal to
morals as to life, and that the natural in-
equality between the races would be in-
creased by a constant accession of num-
bers to the white through emigration, it
is not extravagant to assert that extermina-
ting massacre would involve a swifter,
but scarcely more certain or more cruel
death.

If emancipation took place in a tropi-
cal region, where climate forbade the
competition of white labour, and the exu-
berance of nature supplied the means
of life without the necessity of intelli-
gent and systematic industry, there are
other causes which would remove from
the slave every safeguard of progress,
and render his relapse into barbarism
inevitable. Civilization depends upon
J activity, development, progress. It is
measured by our wants and our work.
Without indulging in any rash generali-
zations, we may safely affirm, that where
animal life can be sustained without la-
bour, and an enervating climate invites
to indolent repose, we cannot expect from
that class of society upon whom in every
country the cultivation of the soil de-
pends, any industrious emulation. So
powerful is the influence of these physi-
cal causes over barbarous tribes, that
under the torrid zone, as we are in-
formed by Humboldt, where a beneficent
hand has profusely scattered the seeds
of abundance, indolent and improvident
man experiences periodically a want of
subsistence which is unfelt in the sterile
regions of the North. As men increase
in virtue and intelligence, they become
more capable of resisting the operation of
climate and other natural laws, but some
form of slavery has been the only basis
upon which civilization has yet rested in
any tropical country. If it can be sus-
tained upon any other, it must be by a
race endowed with a larger fund of na-
tive energy than the African, or quick-
ened by the electric power of a higher

culture than he has ever possessed. His
moral and physical conformation pre-
dispose him to indolence. Ccsclum tiqu
anivium mutant, has been the law of his
history. Under the Code Rural of Hayti,
the harshest compulsion has been used to
subdue the sloth of barbarism, and to
compel the labour of the free black man,
but in vain. In the British West In-
dies, since emancipation, no expedients
have proven effectual to conquer this re-
pugnance to exertion. The English his-
torian, Alison, who whatever may be his
political sentiments, has no sympathies
with slavery, in his last volume, thus de-
scribes the result of the experiment.
"But disastrous as the results of the p-
change have been to British interests
both at home and in the West Indies,
they are as nothing to those which have
ensued to the negroes themselves, both in
their native seats and the Trans-Atlantic
Colonies. The fatal gift of premature
emancipation has proved as pernicious to
a race as it always does to an individual:
the boy of seventeen sent out into the
world, has continued a boy, and does as
other boys do. The diminution of the
agricultural exported produce of the
islands to less than a half, proves how
much their industry has declined. The
reduction of the consumption of their
British produce and manufactures in a
similar pftrportion, tells unequivocally
how much their means of comfort and
enjoyment have fallen off. Generally
speaking, the incipient civilization of
the negro has been arrested by his eman-
cipation : with the cessation of forced
labour, the habits which spring from
and compensate it, have disappeared, and
savage habits and pleasures have re-
sumed their ascendency over the sable
race. The attempts to instruct and civil-
ize them have, for the most part, proved
a failure; the dolce far niente equally
dear to the unlettered savage as to the
effeminate European, has resumed its
sway ; and the emancipated Africans dis-
persed in the woods, or in cabins erected
amidst the ruined plantations, are fast
relapsing into the state in which their
ancestors were when first torn from their
native seats by the rapacity of a Chris-

12

Is Slave?-}/ Consistent ivith Natural Law?

tian avarice." A melancholy confirma-
tion of this statement is furnished by a
fact which I have learned from a reliable
private source, that the prevailing crimes
of this population have changed from
petty larceny to felonies of the highest
grades. But if the black race could
escape barbarism, or defy those destroy-
ing elements of society, poverty and
crime, there is a more comprehensive
political induction which establishes the
justice and expediency of its subjection
to servitude. If in any community there
is an inferior race which is condemned
by permanent and irresistible causes to
occupy the condition of a working class,
not as independent proprietors of the
8oil they till, but as labourers for hire,
then a system of personal slavery under
which the welfare of the slave could be
connected with the interest of the master,
would be far preferable to the collective
servitude of a degraded caste. This pro-
position supposes the existence, not of
an inferior class simply, but an inferior
race — which, as such, is condemned by
nature to wear the livery of servitude in
some form — which can never be quick-
ened or sustained by those animating
prospects of wealth, dignity and power
which, in a homogeneous community,
pour a renovating stream of moral
health through every vein and artery
of social life — which must earn a scanty
and precarious subsistence by a stern, un-
intermitting and unequal struggle with
selfish capital. Can any skepticism re-
sist the conviction that, under such cir-
cumstances, a social adjustment which
would engage the selfish passions of the
superior race to provide for the comfort
of the inferior, must be an arrangement
of mercy as well as of justice? Upon this
question the experience of England is
full of instruction. The abolition of
slavery upon the continent of Europe
gradually converted the original serfs
into owners of the soil. In England, it
terminated with personal manumission —
leaving the villein to work as a labourer
for wages, or to farm as a tenant upon
lease. What has been the effect of this
great social revolution? I do not refer to
that saturnalia of poverty, misery, va-

grancy, and crime which immediately
followed the disruption of the old feudal
bonds, and the adjustment of the new
relations of lord and vassal, by the " cold
justice of the laws of political economy."
What is the present condition of the Eng-
lish labourer? English writers, whose
fidelity and accuracy are above suspicion,
have almost exhausted the power of lan-
guage in describing his abject wretched-
ness and squalid misery. They have dis-
tributed their population into the rich,
the comfortable, the poor, and the perish-
ing. That " bold peasantry, their coun-
try's pride," has almost disappeared.
Every improvement in an industrial
process which diminishes the amount
of human labour, brings with it more
or less of suffering to the English opera-
tive. Every scarce harvest, every fluc-
tuation in trade, every financial crisis
exposes him to beggary or starvation.
In the selfish competition between the
capitalist and workman, says a distin-
guished christian philanthropist, " the
capitalist, whether farmer, merchant, or
manufacturer, plays the game, wins all
the high stakes, takes the lion's share of
the profits, and throws all the losses,
involving pauperism and despair, upon
the masses." Nothing can be more
hopeless than the condition of the agri-
cultural labourer. All the life of Eng-
land, says Bowen in his lectures on Politi-
cal Economy, "is in her commercial and
manufacturing classes. Outside of the
city walls, we are in the middle ages again.
There are the nobles and the serfs, true
castes, for nothing short of a miracle can
elevate or depress one who is born a mem-
ber of either." Moral and intellectual
culture cannot be connected with physi-
cal destitution and suffering. We are not
therefore surprised to learn, from a recent
British Quarterly, that there is an over-
whelming class of outcasts at the bottom
of their society whom the present system
of popular education does not reach, who
are below the influence of religious ordi-
nances, and scarcely operated upon by any
wholesome restraint of public opinion.
For the relief of this wretchedness an
immense pauper system has grown up,
as grinding in its exactions upon the rich,

Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law?

13

as clemoralizlng in its bounties to the
poor. But even this frij^htful evil ap-
pears insignificant, in comparison with
that embittered and widening feud be-
tween the classes of society, which has
filled the most sanguine friends of hu-
man progress with the apprehension, that
England's greatest danger may spring
from the despair of her own children, the
beggars who gaze in idleness and misery
at her wealth, the savages who stand by
the side of her civilization, and the
heathen who have been nursed in the
bosom of her Christianity. Tiie intelli-
gent philanthropists of England, place
their whole hope of remedy in plans
of colonization — plans for substituting
cooperative associations for the system of
hired service — plans for increasing the
number of peasant proprietors, and thus
placing labour on a more independent
basis — for educating the working class,
and for legislation which will facilitate the
circulation of capital, and the more equal
distribution of property. But if this evil
working in the heart of the nation be
incurable, if the helotism of the working
classes should prove, as it has already
been pronounced, irretrievable, I am far
from advocating a reduction of the Eng-
lish labourer to slavery. There is no
radical distinction of race, between the
labourer and the capitalist. The latter
owes his superiority, not to nature, but
to the vantage ground of opportunity.
Nature has implanted a consciousness of
equality, so deeply in the bosom of the
labourer, that personal slavery would
bring with it a sense of degradation he
could never endure. Whatever the gene-
ral destitution and sufferings of his class,
an undying hope will ever whisper to
the individual that a happy fortune
may raise him to comfortable indepen-
dence, or social consideration. The very
thought, that from his loins may spring
some stately figure to tread, with dignity
the shining eminences of life, is able to
alleviate many hours of despondency.
But above all, an instinctive love of
liberty, such as was felt by the Spartan
when he compared it to the sun, the most
brilliant, and at the same time, the most
useful object in creation, cherished in the

Englishman by the traditions of centu-
ries of struggle in its achievement and
defence, cause him to echo the sentiment
of his own poet,

"Bondage is winter, darkness, death, des-

pair, '^

Freedom, the sun, the sea, the mountains
and the air."

I fully subscribe to an opinion which
has been expressed by an accomplished
Southern writer, that an attempt to en-
slave the English labourer would equal,
though it could not exceed in folly, an
attempt to liberate the American slave —
either seriously attempted and with suffi-
cient power to oppose the natural current
of events would overwhelm the civiliza-
tion of the continent in which it occurred
in anarchy. But if the English labourer
belonged to a different race from his em-
ployer ; if they were separated by a moral
and intellectual disparity such as divides
the Southern slave from his master: if ^
instead of the sentiments and traditions
of liberty which would make bondage
worse than death, he had the gentle, tract-
able and submissive temper that adapt
the African to servitude, who can doubt
that a slavery which would insure com-
fort and kindness, would improve his con-
dition in all its aspects ?

None of the circumstances w))ich pre-
vent the application of the general pro-
position we have been discussing to the
English labourer, extend to the American
slave— none of the plans which have been
suggested for the relief of the former
would offer any hope of amelioration to
the latter. No man who knows anything
of the negro character, can for a moment '^
suppose that the land of the country,
could be distributed between them as teu-
ant proprietors. If it was given to them
to day, their improvidence would make it
the property of the white man tonmrrow.
Indeed the fact to which Mr. Webster
called attention, that the products of the
slave-holding States are destined mainly,
not for immediate consumption, but for
purposes of manufacture and commercial
exchange, exclude the possibility of an
extended system of tenant proprietorship,
and render cultivation and disposal by

14

Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law?

capital upon a large scale indispensable.
The black man if emancipated must work
for hire. Would he be better able to hold
his own against the capitalist than the
English labourer ? Would not the misery
and degradation of the latter, but faintly
foreshadow the doom of the emancipated
Blave ? His days embittered and short-
ened by privation ; cheered by no hope of
a brighter future: the burthens of liber-
ty without its privileges ; the degradation
of bondage without its compensations ;
"the name of freedom graven on a heav-
ier chain ;" his root in the grave, the lib-
erated negro under the influence of moral
causes as irresistible as the laws of grav-
ity, -would moulder earthward. What is
thei-e, may I not ask, in the misery and
desolation of this collective servitude, to
compensate for the sympathy, kindness,
comfort, and protection which so generally
solace the suffering, and sweeten the toil,
and make tranquil the slumber, and con-
tented the spirits of the slave, whose lot
has been cast in the sheltering bosom of
a Southern home ?

The approximation to equality in num-
bers, which has been hastily supposed to
render emancipation safer than in the
West Indies, would give rise to our
greatest danger. It will not be long be-
fore the unmixed white population of the
West Indies will be reduced, by the com-
bined influences of emigration and amal-
gamation, to a few factors in the sea
ports. In the United States, not only
would the exodus of either race, or their
fusion, be impracticable, but the pride
of civilization, which now stoops with
alacrity to bind up the wounds of the
slave, would spurn the aspiring contact
of the free man. The points of sympa-
thy between master and slave may not
be as numerous or powerful as we could
desire, but between the white and the
black man, in any society in which they
^ are recognised as equals, and in which
the latter are sufficiently numerous to
create apprehension as to the conse-
quences of distrust and aversion, a grow-
ing ill-will would deepen into irrecon-
cilable animosity. Look at the isolation
in which, notwithstanding their insignifi-
cance as a class, the free blacks of the

North now live. "The negro," says De
Tocqueville, "is free, but he can share
neither the rights, nor the pleasures,
nor the labour, nor the affections, ^
nor the altar, nor the tomb of him
whose equal he has been declared to
be. lie meets the white man upon fair
terms, neither in life nor in death."
What could be expected from a down-
trodden race, existing in masses large
enough to be formidable, in whose bosoms
the law itself nourished a sense of
injustice by proclaiming an equality
which Xature and society alike denied,
with passions unrestrained by any stake
in the public peace, or any bonds of at-
tachment to the superior class, but that
it should seek in some frenzy of despair,
to shake off its doom of misery and deg-
radation ? Would not the atrocities which
have always distinguished a war of races,
be perpetrated on a grander and more
appalling scale than the world has ever
yet witnessed ? The recollections of
hereditary feud alone have, in every age,
so inflamed the angry passions of our
nature as to lend a deeper gloom even to
the horrors of war. When the poet de-
scribes the master of the lyre, as seeking
to rouse the martial ardour of the Grecian
conqueror and his attendant nobles, he
brings before them the ghosts of their
Grecian ancestors that were left unburied
on the plains of Troy, who tossing their
lighted torches —

" Point to the Persian abodes,
And glittering temples of their hostilegods."'

But what would be the ferocity awakened
in half-savage bosoms, when embittered
memories of long-descended hate towards
a superior race, exasperated by the mad-
dening pangs of want, impelled them to
seek retribution for centuries of imagi-
nary wrong? Either that precious har-
vest of civilization which has been slowly
ripening under the toils of successive
generations of our fathers, and the genial
sunshine and refreshing showers of centu-
ries of kindly Providence, would be
gathered by the rude sons of spoil, or
peace would return after a tragedy of
crime and sorrow, with whose burthen of

Is Slavery Consistent with Natural Law?

15

■woe the voice of history would be tremu-
lous through long ages of after time.

The whole reasoning of modern phi-
lanthropy upon this subject has been
vitiated, by its overlooking those funda-
mental moral differences between the
races, which constitute a far more im-
portant element in the political arrange-
ments of society, than relative intellec-
tual power. It is immaterial how these
differences have been created. Their ex-
istence is certain ; and if capable of re-
moval at all, they are yet likely to en-
dure for such an indefinite period, that
in the consideration of any practical pro-
blem, we must regard them as permanent.
The collective superiority of a race can
no more exempt it from the obligations
of justice and mercy, than the personal
superiority of an individual ; but where
unequal races are compelled to live to-
gether, a sober and intelligent estimate
of their several aptitudes and capacities
must form the basis of their social and
political organization. The intellectual
weakness of the black man is not so
characteristic, as the moral qualities which
distinguish him from his white brother.
The warmest friends of emancipation,
amongst others the late Dr. Channing,
have acknowledged that the civilization
of the African, must present a different
type from that of the Caucasian, and re-
semble more the development of the
East than the West. His nature is made
1 up of the gentler elements. Docile, af-
fectionate, light-hearted, facile to impres-
sion, reverential, he is disposed to look
without for strength and direction. In
the courage that rises with danger, in the
energy that would prove a consuming fire
to its possessor, if it found no object upon
which to spend its strength, in the proud
aspiring temper which would render
slavery intolerable, he is far inferior to
other races. Hence, subordination is as
congenial to his moral, as a warm latitude
is to his physical nature. Freedom is not
"chartered on his manly brow" as on
that of the native Indian. Unkindness
awakens resentment, but servitude alone
carries no sense of degradation fatal to
self respect. Acivili/.ation like our own
could be developed only by a free people;

but under a system of slavery to a superior
race, which was ameliorated by the
charities of our religion, the African is
capable of making indefinite progress.
He is not animated by that love if liberty
which Bacon quaintly compar d to a
spark that ever flieth in the facii of him
who seeketh to trample it un cr foot.
The masses of the old world, unt'er vari-
ous forms of slavery, have exhibited a
standing discontent, and their struggles
for freedom have been the flashes of a
smothered but deeply hidden fire. The
obedience of the African, unless dis-
turbed by some impulse from without,
and to which he yields only in a vague
hope of obtaining respite from labour, is
willing and cheerful. De Toqqueville, iu
his work on the French Revolution, points
out a difference between nations, in what
he calls the sublime taste for freedom —
some seeking it for its material blessings
only, others for its intrinsic attractions ;
and adds, " that he who seeks freedom
for anything else than freedom's self, is
made to be a slave." How fallacious
must be any political induction which
transfers to the African that love of
personal liberty, which wells from the
heart of our own race in a spring-tide of
passionate devotion, the winters of despot-
ism could never chill. The Providence
which appointed the Anglo-Saxon to
lead the van of human progress fitted
him for his mission, by preconfiguring
his soul to the influences of freedom.
This sentiment is indestructible in his
nature. It would survive the degrada-
tion of any form or term of bondage. Like
the sea shell, when torn from its home in
the deep, his heart, through all the ages
of slavery, would be vocal with the music
of his native liberty.

The strength of that security against
oppression which the Southern slave de-
rives from the selfishness of human na-
ture, has never been sufficiently appre-
ciated, for in truth, it has existed in con-
nection with no other form of servitude.
With exceptions too slight to deserve re-
mark, in Greece and Rome, in the Brit-
ish and Spanish colonies, it was cheaper
to buy slaves than to raise them, to work
them to death, than to provide for them

/

16

Is Slavery Consistent witJi Natural Lato?

in life. Hence in Rome, the slaves of the
public were better cared for than those
of the individual. With us, the master
has a large and immediate interest, not
only in the life, but the health, comfort
and improvement of his slave, for they
all add to his value and efficiency as a
labourer. Southern slavery must there-
fore be tried upon its own merits, and not
by data true or false, collected from other
forms of servitude. Arithmetic, Gibbon
^ once said, is the natural enemy of rheto-
ric, and a single statement vrill suffice to
discredit all the reasoning, and pour con-
tempt upon all the declamation which has
confounded our slavery with that of the
British West Indies. From the most re-
liable calculations that can be made, says
Carey, in his Essay on the Slave Trade,
it appears that for every African import-
ed into the United States, ten are now to
be found, such has been the wonderful
growth of population ; for every three
imported into the British West Indies,
only one now exists, such has been its
frightful decline. But however ample
this protection may be to the slave from
the oppression of strangers, his own pas-
sions it is urged, will lead the master to
spurn the restraints of interest. But
what security against an abuse of power,
has human wisdom ever devised which is
likely to operate with such uniform and
prevailing force ? As Burke said of ano-
ther social institution, " it makes our
weakness subservient to our virtue, and
grafts our benevolence, even upon our
avarice." All the evidence v.hich is ac-
cessible, the statistics of population, of
consumption as shown both by im-
ports, and the balance between production
and exports, and the testimony of intel-
ligent and candid travellers bear witness
to its general efficiency. And it is to be
remarked that whilst the slave partakes
largely and immediately of his master's
prosperity ; the reverses which reduce
the latter to beggary or starvation, pass
almost harmless over his head. In other
countries, the pressure of every public
calamity falls upon the working classes :
but with us the slave is placed in a great
measure beyond their reach, by the cir-
cumstance that his hire or ownership im-

port a condition of life in Avhich the means
of subsistence are enjoyed. From the
demoralization of extreme want, so fatal
to virtue as well as happiness in other
lands, he is thus always saved. It was
the benevolent wish of Henr}' the Fourth
of France, that every peasant in his do-
minions might have a fowl in his pot for
Sunday. In every age the patriot has of-
fered a similar prayer for the labouring
poor of his country. But it is only in the
Southern States of our confederacy, that
the sun ever beheld a meal of wholesome
and abundant food, the daily reward of
the children of toil.

The relation is so far from having any
tendency to provoke those angry and re-
sentful feelings -which would excite the
master to acts of cruelty, that its tendency
is directly the reverse.

It was truly said by Legare, that ^ar-
cerc suhjedis, was not exclusively a Ro-
man virtue: that it was a law of the
heart, the usual attribute of undisputed
power ; and that there were few men who
did not feel the force of that beautiful
and touching appeal: " Behold, behold,
I am thy servant." It was owing to this
principle that when the dependence of
the feudal vassal upon his lord was most
complete, their mutual attachment, (as
we arc assured by Gilbert Stewart and
other historians of this period,) was
strongest, and as the feudal tenure decay-
ed, and the law was interposed between
them, the kindness upon one side and the
affection and gratitude upon the other dis-
appeared. It is not simply the conscious-
ness of strength which tends to disarm
resentment in the bosom of the master. It
is the long and intimate association, con-
nected with the feelings of interest awa-
kened in all but the hardest hearts by
the cares and responsibilities of guardi-
anship which make the slave an object of
friendly regard, and bring him within
that circle of kindly sympathies which
cluster around the domestic hearth. It
is a form of that generous feeling which
bound the Highland chieftain to hia
clan, and which, with greater or less
force, depending upon the virtue of the
age, attaches to every relation of patri-
archal authority. According to Dr. Ar-

Is Slavery Consistent xoith Natural Law.

17

nold, (in his tract on the Social condition
of the Operative Classes,) the old system
of English slavery was far kinder than
that now existing in England of hired
service. The affection between the mas-
ter and the villain is shown by the fact
that villainage " wore out " by volunta-
ry manumission — a circumstance which
never would have happened had the rela-
tion been one simply of profit and loss.
Shakspeare in his character of old Adam,
in "As You Like It," has adverted to the
more genial and kindly elements which
distinguished this legal service from that
for wages. Orlando, in replying to the
pressing entreaty of the old servant
to go with him, and " do the service of a
younger man in all his business and ne-
cessities," says —

" Oh good old man, how well in thee ap-
pears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty — not for
meed."

The mutual good will of distinct classes
has, in all ages, been dependent upon a
well defined subordination. This opin-
ion is confirmed by the testimony of one
of the most eloquent writers of New Eng-
land, in reference to the workings of its
social system as they fell under his perso-
nal observation. I appeal, says Dana in
his Essay on Law as suited to Man, "to
those who remember the state of our do-
mestic relations, when the old Scriptural
terms of master and servant were in
use. I do not fear contradiction when I
say there was more of mutual good will
then than now ; more of trust on the
one side and fidelity on the other ; more
of protection and kind care, and more of
gratitude and affectionate respect in re-
turn ; and because each understood well
his place, actually more of a certain free-
dom, tempered by gentleness and by de-
ference. From the very fact that the dis-
tinction of classes was more marked, the
bond between the individuals constitu-
ting these two, was closer. As a general
truth, I verily believe that, with the ex-
ception of near-blood relationships, and
here and there peculiar friendships, the
attachment of master and servant was
2

closer and more enduring than that of
almost any other connection in life. The
young of this day, under a change of for-
tune, will hardly live to see the eye of
an old, faithful servant fill at their fall ;
nor will the old domestic be longer
housed and warmed by the fireside of
his master's child, or be followed by him
to the grave. The blessed sun of those
good old days has gone down, it may
be for ever, and it is very cold." It is
through the operation of these kindly
sentiments, which it awakens on both
sides, that African slavery reconciles the
antagonism of classes that has elsewhere
reduced the highest statesmanship to the
verge of despair, and becomes the great
Peace-maker of our society, converting
inequalities, which are sources of danger
and discord in other lands, into pledges
of reciprocal service, and bonds of mu-
tual and intimate friendship.

But a vigilant and restraining public
opinion surrounds our slaves with a cu-
mulative security. The master is no char-
tered libertine. Custom, the greatest of
law-givers, places visible metes and bounds
upon his authority which few are so har-
dy as to transcend. Native humanity
and Christian principle inscribe their lim-
itations upon the living tables of his heart.
A public sentiment, growing in its strength
and increasing in its exactions, covers the ''
slave with a protecting shield, far less
easily or frequently broken through, than
those feeble barriers of law which in our
Free States, are interposed between the
degraded and outcast black man, and his
white brother. Written laws never to be
received as accurate exponents of the
rights and privileges of a people, are
most fallacious when appealed to as a
standard, by which to determine the char-
acter of a system of slavery ; for the wi-
sest and most humane must acknowledge
that the introduction of law may so dis-
turb the harmony and good will of any
domestic relation, as to breed more mis-
chief than it can possibly cure. It is not
simply in reference to the food, clothing,
work, holydays, punishments of slaves,
that public sentiment exercises its super-
vision and restraint. It looks to the
whole range of their happiness and im-

18

Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law ?

provement. It is operating with great
force in inducing masters to provide more
extended facilities for their religious in-
struction. It has to a large extent termi-
nated that disruption of family ties, which
,has always constituted the most serious
obstacle to the improvement of the slave,
and the severest hardship of his lot. A

^ Scotch weaver, William Thompson, who
travelled through our Southern States in
1843, on foot, sustaining himself by man-
ual labour, and mixing constantly with
our slave population, states in a book
which he published on his return home,
that the separation of families did not
take place here to such an extent as
amongst the labouring poor of Scotland.
"We know that the evil has been dimin-
ishing with every succeeding day, and I
trust that public sentiment will not leave
this most beneficent work half done. The
sanctity and integrity of the family union
is the germ of all civilization. There is
nothing in slavery to make its violation
inevitable. It may require some time and
sacrifice to accommodate the habits of so-
ciety to the universal prevalence of a
permanent tenure in these relations. But
through the agency of public sentiment
alone, acting upon buyer and seller, and
operating where necessary through com-
binations of benevolent neighbours, the
mischief in its entire dimensions lies
within the grasp of remedy.

Slavery is charged with fixing a point
in the scale of civilization, beyond which
it does not permit the labourer to rise.
God, it is argued, has conferred the capa-
city and imposed the duty of improve-
ment, but man forever denies the oppor-
tunity. I admit that the refining, eleva-
ting, and liberalizing influences of know-

^ ledge can not be imparted to the slave, in
an equal degree with his master. But
this arises from the fact that he is a la-
bourer, not that he is a slave. It proceeds
from a combination of circumstances
which human laws could not alter, and
which render daily toil the unavoidable
portion of the black man. Civilization is
a complex result, demanding a multitude
of special offices and functions, for whose
performance men are fitted, and even
reconciled by gradations in intelligence

and culture. However exalting or enno-
bling might be the knowledge of Newton
or Herschell, God in his Providence has
denied to the larger part of the human
family, the opportunity of obtaining it.
The apparent hardship of this arrange-
ment disappears when we reflect that this
life is only a school of discipline and pro-
bation for another, and that a variety of
condition involving distinct spheres of
duty, may be the wisest and most merci-
ful provision for each. Every age rises
to a higher level of general intelligence,
but the mass of men must be satisfied
with that prime wisdom, " to know that
before us lies in daily life." Whilst I
doubt not that,

" Through the ages one increasing purpose

runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with

the circuit of the suns,"

yet so long as the Divine ordinance, the
poor ye have always with you, remains
unrepealed — an ordinance without which
the fruits of industry would be consumed,
and its accumulations cease, the classes
of society must be divided by a broad
line of disparity in intellectual culture.
Emancipation would not relieve the slave
from the necessities of daily labour, or ''
furnish the leisure for extended mental
cultivation. There might be individual
exceptions ; but all legislation must take
its rule from the general course of human
nature, not its accidental departures and
variations. It is emancipation and not
servitude, which would forever darken
and extinguish those prospects of amelio-
ration that now lie imaged in the bright
perspective of Christian hope. The slave
will partake more and more of the life-
giving civilization of the master. As it
is, his intimate relations with the supe-
rior race, and the unsystematic instruc-
tion he receives in the family, have placed
him in pointof general intelligence above
a large portion of the white labourers of
Europe. It appears from the most recent
statistics, that one half the adult popula- *''
tion of England and Wales are unable to
write their names. It was of English

Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law f

19

labourers, not American slaves, that Gray
■Vfrote those touching lines —

"But knowledge to their eyes her ample
page,

Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er un-
roll ;

Chill penury repressed their noble rage.

And froze the genial current of the soul."

But it is supposed that our slaves can
never be instructed without danger to
the public safety, as knowledge, like the
admission of light into a subterranean
mine, might lead to an explosion. There
may be circumstances in which the su-
preme law of self-preservation will com-

■4 mand us to withhold from the slave the
degree of information, we would gladly
impart. But it is never to be forgotteo,
that this stern and inexorable necessity
will not be created by the system icself.
The sin, and the responsibility of its exis-
tence will lie at the door of the misjudg-
ing philanthropy which has rashly and ig-
norantly interposed to adjust relations on
whose balance hang great issues of liber-
ty and civilization. If the views which
have been presented are true, the more

V his reason was instructed, the clearer
would be the slave's perception of the
general equity of the arrangement which
fixed his lot. But if knowledge is to in-
troduce him to a literature which will
confuse his understanding by its sophis-
try, whilst it inflames his passions by its
appeals, which will exaggerate his rights
and magnify his wrongs, then mercy to
the slave, as well as justice to society re-
quire us to protect him from the folly and
crime into which he might be hurried by
the madness of moral intoxication. We
will not throw open our gates, that the
enemies of peace may sow the dragon's
teeth of discord, and leave us to reap a
harvest of confusion and rebellion — but
•when they come to plant love amongst us,
te teach apostolic precepts, as elementary
morality, and to hold up the standard of
Holy Scripture as the rule of conduct,
and proof of law, we will give them hos-
pitable welcome.

If I have at all comprehended the ele-
ments which should enter into the deter-

mination of this momentous problem of
social welfare and public authority, the
existence of African Slavery amongst us,
furnishes no just occasion for self-re-
proach; much less for the presumptuous
rebuke of our fellow man. As individu-
als, we have cause to humble ourselves
before God, for the imperfect discharge
of our duties in this, and in every other
.relation of life: but for its justice and
morality as an element of our social pol- *^
ity, we may confidently appeal to those
future ages, which, when the bedimming
mists of passion and prejudice have van-
ished, will examine it in the pure light of
truch, and pronounce the final sentence
of impartial History. Beyond our own
borders, there has been no sober and in-
telligent estimate of its distinctive fea-
tures; no just apprehension of the na-
ture, extent and permanence of the dis-
parities between the races, or of the fatal
consequences to the slave, of a freedom
which would expose him to the uncheck-
ed selfishness of a superior civilization ;
no conception approaching to the reality
of the power which has been exerted by
a public sentiment, springing from Chris-
tian principle, and sustained by the uni-
versal instincts of self-interest, in tem-
pering the severity of its restraints, and
impressing upon it the mild character of
a patriarchal relation ; no rational antici-
pation of the improvement of which the
negro would be capable under our form of
servitude, if those who now nurse the wild
and mischievous dream of peaceful eman
cipation, should lend all their energies to
the maintenance of the only social system
under which his progressive amelioration
appears possible. African slavery is no y
relic of barbarism to which we cling from
the ascendency of semi-civilized tastes,
habits, and principles; but an adjustment
of the social and political relations of the
races, consistent with the purest justice,
commended by the highest expediency,
and sanctioned by a comprehensive and
enlightened humanity. It has no doubt
been sometimes abused by the base and
wicked passions of our fallen nature to
purposes of cruelty and wrong ; but where
is the school of civilization from which
the stern and wholesome discipline of suf-

20

Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law f

fering has been banished? or the human
landscape not saddened by a dark-flowing
stream of sorrow ? Its history when fair-
"^ ly written, will be its ample vindication.
It has weaned a race of savages from su-
perstition and idolatry, imparted to them
a general knowledge of the precepts of
the true religion, implanted in their bo-
soms sentiments of humanity and princi-
ples of virtue, developed a taste for the
arts and enjoyments of civilized life,
given an unknown dignity and elevation
to their type of physical, moral and intel-
lectual man, and for the two centuries
during which this humanizing process has
taken place, made for their subsistence
and comfort, a more bountiful provision,
than was ever before enjoyed in any age
or country of the world by a labouring
class. If tried by the test which we ap-
ply to other institutions, the whole sum
of its results, there is no agency of civi-
lization which has accomplished so much
in the same time, for the happiness and
advancement of our race.

I am fully persuaded, Mr. President,
that the preservation of our peace and
"' union, our property and liberty depend
upon the triumph of these opinions over
the delusion and ignorance which have
obscured and perplexed the public j udg-
ment upon this question of slavery. I
believe that they indicate the only tena-
ble line of argument along which we can
defend our rights or character. So long
as men regard all forms of slavery as sin-
ful, they will be conducted to the conclu-
sion that any aid or comfort to them, is
likewise sinful, by a logical necessity,
which their passions or interests can only
resist for a time. The conviction that
justice is the highest expediency for the
statesman, the first duty of the Christian,
and should be the supreme law of the
State, will sooner or later establish its
supremacy over all combinations of par-
ties and interests. So long as our fellow-
citizens of the North look upon this rela-
tion as barbarous and corrupting, they
must and ought to desire and seek its ex-
tinction, as a great vice and crime. Eve-
ry year will deepen their sympathy with
the slave, suifering under unjust bonds,
and inflame their resentful indignation

towards the master who holds his odious
property with unrelaxing grasp. Mutual
self-respect is the only term of association
upon which either individuals or societies
can or ought to live together. How
long could our Union endure, if it was to
be preserved by submission to a fixed pol-
icy of injustice, and acquiescence under
an accumulating burthen of reproach?
We are willing to give much for Union.
We will give territory for it ; the broad
acres we have already surrendered would
make an empire. We will give blood for
it; we have shed it freely upon every
field of our country's danger and renown.
We will give love for it; the confiding,
the forgiving, the overflowing love of
brothers and freemen. But much as we
value it, we will not purchase it at the
price of liberty or character. A union
of suspicion, aversion, injustice, in which
we would be banned not blessed, outlaw-
ed not protected, whether by faction un-
der the forms of law or revolution over
them I care not, has no charms for me.
The Union I love, is that which our fa-
thers formed ; a Union which, when it
took its place upon the majestic theatre
of history, consecrated by the benedic-
tions of patriots and freemen, and covered
all over with images of fame, was a fel-
lowship of equal and fraternal States ; a
Union which was established not only as
a bond of strength, but as a pledge of
justice and a sacrament of affection ; a
Union which was intended like the arch
of the heavens to embrace within the
span of its beneficent influence all inter-
ests and sections and to rest oppressively
or unequally upon none ; a Union in
which the North and the South— "like
the double celled heart, at every full
stroke," beat the pulses of a common
liberty and a common glory. Mr. Madi-
son has recorded a beautiful incident,
which occurring as the members of the
Federal Convention, were attaching their
signatures to the Constitution, forms a
fitting and significant close to its proceed-
ings. Dr. Franklin pointing to the paint-
ing of a sun which hung behind the
speaker's chair, and adverting to a difii-
culty which is said to exist in discrimi-
nating between the picture of a rising

Is Slavery consistent with Natural Law ?

21

and a setting sun, remarked t'lat during
the progress of their deliberations, he had
often looked at this painting and been
doubtful as to its character, but that he
now saw clearly it was a rising sun.
When the fancy of Franklin gave to the
painting its auroral hues, she had dipped
her pencil in his heart. Let but a heal-
ing conviction of the true character of
our system of slavery enter into the pub-
lic sentiment of the North ; let it under-
^ stand that the South is seeking to dis-
charge, not simply the obligations of jus-
tice, but the larger debt of Christian hu-
manity towards this degraded race ; and
that if it has not accomplished moi'e, it
is because its people like the workmen
upon Solomon's temple, have been com-
pelled to labour on their social fabric with
the trowel in one hand, and the sword in
the other : and the old feelings of mutual
regard would soon follow a mutual respect
resting upon immovable foundations; the
animosities and dissensions of the Past
would be buried in the duties of the Pre-
sent and the Hopes of the Future; the mem-
ories of our great heroic age would breathe
over us a second spring of patriotism: the
comprehensive Amei'icaa sentiment which
framed this league of love would revive
in all its quickening power, in the bosoms
of our people, spreading undivided over
every portion of our territory, and opera-
ting unspent through all generations of
our history ; the Union would be so clasp-

ed in the North, and in the South, to our
heart of hearts, that death itself could
not tear loose the clinging tendrils of de-
votion ; and that emblematic painting in
which our fathers, with "no form nor
feeling in their souls, unborrowed from
their country," greeted with patriot
prayer and hope, the rising beams of
morning, would never by any line of les-
sening light, betoken to the eyes of their
children a parting radiance.

I have an abiding faith in Time, Truth,
and Providence. Let but the educated
mind of our society be fully awakened
to the magnitude of its responsibilities,
and thoroughly instructed in the duties
of its mission : let it meet the falsifica-
tions of history, and perversions of phi-
losophy, and corruptions of religion, iu
the varied forms of wise and temperate
discussion ; let it catch the spirit of Mil-
ton, when he was content to lose his sight
in writing for the defence of the liberties
of England, and inspired by yet deeper
enthusiasm in a cause upon which may
depend the liberties and civilization of
the whole earth, now in common peril
from a universal licentiousness of opin-
ion, unseal all its fountains of wit, elo-
quence and logic ; and there would soon
set out from our Southern coast, a great
moral Gulf Stream, able to penetrate and
warm all currents of opposing thought —
although they come in the strength and
volume of ocean tides.

Note. — This Address at the time of its delivery had not been entirely committed to
writing. The author has sometimes found it impossible to recall the exact language
which was then employed. He has, also, after conference with some members of the
Executive Committee of the State Agricultural Society, added an occasional statement
and illustration, which the limits of the oral discourse obliged him to omit.

/

sup.

ties aL

citizens

tion as bi.

must and ou^

tinction, as a g

ry year will deei^

the slave, suffering

and inflame their rt

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